25 thoughts on “TBT: Angelique, Marquise des Anges (1964)

  1. Hey Kendra, I’m going to guess that as an Outlander fan, you would actually love the Angelique books. Because of the cheesy movies and the ridiculous paperback covers, a lot of people think the books are romance novels but they actually aren’t. They have a romance in them, but they are really historical novels. They were written by Sergeanne Golon. They were two people. Serge and Anne. Serge was a scientist who fled russia in 1917 and Anne was a journalist. Anne is still alive and had to fight for the rights to her books and had been living in poverty for years. Her fans formed a group that helped to support her financially and also to hire lawyers to get royalties from her books. She is currently finishing the series. Don’t be put off by the bodice ripper covers and the sixties bouffant costuming. Try the books. I promise.

    1. Thanks for the rec! I do like historical fiction, so it’s good to hear they’re not as cheese ball as the movie adaptations. I’ll check out the first one and see how it goes!

  2. The movie is pants. The books are brilliant up until Angelique and the Ghosts where it just totally loses the plot – I found them in op shops in high school and just devoured them. The clothes are better in the books! :) Thank you for doing the review! my friend and I watched the first few movies and just shrieked with laughter.

  3. Because if it’s one thing Louis XIV hated, it was low necklines that showed off more cleavage! He was notoriously a total prude and hated boobs and indeed women.

    This is amazing and your captions are amazing!

  4. I loved the books in my early teens, though I think I only read 10 or so… They are better than one can think, but I remember being annoyed that Angelique has tan skin which everyone, despite that pale skin was The Thing in the 17th century, thinks looks absolutely stunning on our heroine. Who clearly looks like Brigitte Bardot in the books. :)

    I can’t reacall if Joffrey had a scar in the books, but he is both limping and slightly hunchbacked. He’ll get cured, eventually.

  5. ~slow clap~ You might need a lot more wine for this.

    And is it just me, or is that the ugliest baby in the history of babies?

  6. I think I read one of the books (or one and a half? Apparently the publisher over here decided to divide the story differently than in the original) when I was a teenager, and I was quite intrigued by it. It wasn’t quite “good literature” (and Angelique got raped/sexually harassed too many a time for my taste) but it was interesting for a few reasons. The main one was Angelique’s sheer energy and resourcefulness. She got into so many seemingly impossible situations yet always found a way to bring herself out of them, and it was always *her* that saved herself. She never let go, never gave up, never cowered away, never lost her will (even when it seemed like she had, she quickly regained it). She was always on the move and always thinking up something new. Whereas the movies (at least the one I’ve seen, I think it was the last one) seem to have made her into just another damsel in distress, always waiting to be rescued from her troubles by some guy.

    1. I agree. I’ve no idea how accurate the Golons’ research was, but they’re good enough writers, if a little purple, and Angelique herself just gets cooler and more mature with every book. What astonished me, as a naive teenager, was that Angelique is actually THIRTY-SEVEN YEARS OLD, or something like that, by the end of the fifth book: ancient! And she’s still gorgeous and smart and sexy and can organize people and plot rebellions, etc. This was a radical idea in romance novels back then.

      (The first five books are the most enjoyable: strong narrative drive, and all that, then A. goes off to the New World for a lot of not terribly exciting episodic adventures obviously meant to stretch the series on forever. I’m afraid I feel the same way about the Outlander novels.)

  7. Haha This is the movie series from my childhood and I watched Angelique films more than I can count! My mum is a huge fan :) I still love watching them and think Michele Mercier (the actress) is gorgeous! I have also read books and recommend them to you. I think there are 13 books in the series and they are very interesting. I couldn’t put them down

  8. Well, when it comes to the description of the clothes in the books by Anne Golon, they are very, very vague, so that many people may indeed think that the characters were dressed like up like in the movies of Bernard Borderie (by the way, I completely agree with your opinion about the costumes there). Unfortunately, the books are not that good either, in the sense that Anne Golon deliberately played fast and loose with history, e. g. including real persons in the plot that at a given time weren’t there at a given place, inventing events and passing them off as real etc. I think that a writer of historical novels shouldn’t do that, because her/his book becomes science fiction then.

    The only good things about the books is their tight narrative and Angelique’s energy and resourcefulness, like other people commented before me.

    I can however recommend the new adaptation of “Angelique” by Ariel Zeitoun from 2013. Much better costumes (they are modest, but more or less historical correct), realistic interiors, really good acting and beautiful photography.

  9. Ah ah ah you’re so right, the movies have not aged well. But since they made me want to do costuming ( Yes I confess !) I cannot blame them entirely ! They are on TV about every year in France, so indeed, kind of our “gone with the wind”. The books are awesome (especially the first ones) and I beg to differ, they are quite accurate. Forget the films, go get the old books ;-)

    1. Joanne, with your review you’ve hit the nail on head. The books of Anne Golon are very sexist (I wonder, if Anne Golon’s husband hasn’t written most their content, because I can’t imagine that a woman could have written this) and what bothered me most was passing off sexual violence as sexy. Even the film by Bernard Borderie from 1964 is better than, well, this pulp fiction. Like I’ve written before, I recommend however the film “Angelique” from 2013. This film has nothing in common with the novels except for the names of the main characters and speaking of them they are much more realistic, complex, intelligent and likeable then their originals in the novels.

  10. Well, as much as I enjoy your articles, and I have to agree with some major mistakes made in this movie series (yes, I watched every single part!) and about the fact that it’s sometimes very cheesy or cliche, I also have to admitt, that I adore Angelique movies. I used to watch it as a child, which clearly is an important factor, but I still enjoy dialogues, which in my opinion are much more brilliant than in most contemporary novels of that type, with Mary Sue heroines and so on. I also love Michele Mercier who really fits the role and looks astonishingly beautiful to me. Not accurate and very lively maybe, but beautiful. And, I may be blaspheming saying this, but I also enjoyed costumes! Not every dress maybe, but some of them are just very pretty in my opinion! Mostly ones with laced collars and toned colours.

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